I finally saw Bourne Supremacy last night, and generally thought it was great. Only one thing bugs me. How could the CIA people POSSIBLY think that Bourne would leave a FINGERPRINT? He's surgically attached to his gloves! Nobody as good as him would leave a print anywhere.

I think they copped to their ignorance, which is why they brought in the ShePotatoe. The idea I think is that Bourne is so ahead of the operative curve that the plebes in the agency don't understand how brilliant he is. Nothing the Potatoe said was news to us, but they sure acted like it was valuable.

Which makes me worry about them, really. I hope it's more sensible in real life.

But SHE never said "A print? They don't leave prints."

And HE didn't say "A fucking print? You know I don't leave fucking prints!" TO her.

It just bothered me. Not a big deal, obviously.

But even she didn't harp on that. It just seemed so obvious to me as well. I mean, shit, even I would know better than that.

But even she didn't harp on that.

Oh, I totally agree they were all dumb. What should have been SOP is that if all signs point to Bourne, it wasn't him.

Period, end of story, don't call in the specialists.

However, I guess we were supposed to believe they didn't get the magnitude of the supremacy. Even though it was standard CSI-level guessing for us.

FWIW, the plot twist under discussion is cribbed directly from The Bourne Supremacy Identity, in which (to my memory) the unlikeliness of it is never discussed either.

All things considered, one hopes that spy-expectations are high enough that one giant, clear, 100% obvious thumbprint, and no smudged bits here and there on the same piece of machinery, would turn on alarm warning-bells. But, apparently not.

edited to not look like an idiot.

I see what you guys are saying-- they should have explained that, somehow. But nevertheless the CIA guys were practical-- Occam's razor and all that. I mean, how would bad guys get his perfect fingerprint? And why? They'd have to see a reason to frame him before jumping to the conclusion that he was definitely framed. After all, we're saying they should attribute the same incompetence to his framers. And it doesn't necessarily have to be incompetence-- he lost the glove. He needed a steady hand. He's been out for a while.

Actually what bon bon says is true -- for the CIA to attribute the print properly, it has to be able to fit the wrongness of the print into a framework of wrongness, which would point in a different (correct) direction.

The real question, to me, is why did the bad guys pick Bourne as their goat? I mean, did they not see the first movie??

Then again, this is the sort of movie where at least one of the assassins from the first movie was totally unaccounted for, and one character (Julia Stiles) completely disappears from the plot when Bourne is done talking to her. So accounting for the little details may just be too much to ask!

I guess they picked Bourne because they, like the whole world (a bit of a tired device), underestimated him. If they had indeed succeeded in killing him (why the FUCK do you not check for the body?), the CIA would have been merrily wrong.

I have a question about leaving-at-the-altar movies. Well, maybe more than one.

Do we have instances where it's the guy that leaves the girl, and the guy is the sympathetic character? In my memory it's generally the girl that jilts.

In the oh-no-our-heroine-is-marrying-the-wrong-man! stories, it's incumbent upon her to realise the wrongness, and end the relationship just in time, either because it's better to be alone, or to be with the other guy, right?